An assessment of the transparency of contemporary technology education research employing interview-based methodologies

Abstract

A high level of transparency in reported research is critical for several reasons, such as ensuring an acceptable level of trustworthiness and enabling replication. Transparency in qualitative research permits the identifcation of specifc circumstances which are associ ated with fndings and observations. Thus, transparency is important for the repeatability of original studies and for explorations of the transferability of original fndings. There has been no investigation into levels of transparency in reported technology education research to date. With a position that increasing transparency would be benefcial, this article pre sents an analysis of levels of transparency in contemporary technology education research studies which employed interviews within their methodologies, and which were published within the International Journal of Technology and Design Education and Design and Technology Education: An International Journal (n=38). The results indicate room for improvement, especially in terms of documenting researcher positionality, determinations of data saturation, and how power imbalances were managed. A discussion is presented on why it is important to improve levels of transparency in reported studies, and a guide on areas to make transparent is presented for qualitative and quantitative research.